Higher Education
| Critics of the school’s new conduct policy say it’s too vague to protect against future challenges to the sanctity of marriage

by Bonnie Pritchett Posted 7/14/15, 12:30 pm

Gay rights activists and secular media were quick to declare victory last week when Baylor University announced it had removed “homosexual acts” from the school’s list of prohibited sexual conduct. Activists believe the change is a move toward affirming homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage. Although a Baylor representative denies the inference, some alumni of the private Christian college in Waco, Texas, said the policy is sufficiently vague to make such presumptions inevitable.

Religious Liberty
| The legislation will protect clergy from lawsuits if they refuse to officiate same-sex weddings

by Bonnie Pritchett Posted 5/22/15, 08:20 am

UPDATE: On Thursday afternoon, the Texas House passed the Pastor Protection Bill with a 141-2 vote, a vindication for religious liberty advocates who argued the issue of conscience transcended political lines and deserved public debate.

Courts

by Bonnie Pritchett Posted 4/18/15, 11:22 am

HOUSTON—A Harris County district judge ruled Friday that plaintiffs fell 585 signatures short of the required count on a petition recalling a controversial non-discrimination ordinance. Plaintiffs and their supporters, a racially diverse coalition of pastors and civic leaders, will appeal the decision, but they are running against the clock to get an approved referendum on the November ballot by the mid-August deadline.

Courts

Bonnie Pritchett | 4/13/15, 04:48 pm

HOUSTON—In what many expected to be the final hearing in the lawsuit against the City of Houston and Mayor Annise Parker, attorneys continued Monday to haggle over the signature count on a petition drive to recall a controversial non-discrimination ordinance. Only a few hundred signatures separate Houston residents from getting to vote on the ordinance, which makes sexual orientation a protected class. But with a ballot deadline looming, plaintiffs are losing patience.

Courts

Bonnie Pritchett | 2/23/15, 03:18 pm

HOUSTON—The attorney for a coalition of pastors fighting an anti-bias ordinance is cautiously optimistic a judge’s ruling on Friday will validate enough petition signatures to put the city policy on the ballot later this year.

Courts
| Although both sides declared victory in the fight over an anti-bias ordinance, the full effect of the verdict won’t be known until the judge tallies up all the valid petition signatures

Bonnie Pritchett | 2/14/15, 09:00 am

HOUSTON—Both sides declared victory Friday when jurors handed down their verdict in the lawsuit against the City of Houston over an anti-bias ordinance that makes sexual orientation and gender identity a protected class. After the city council passed the ordinance in May, opponents launched a petition drive to put it on the November ballot. Mayor Annise Parker’s administration threw out a majority of the petition signatures, and the opponents sued.

Religious Liberty
| Annise Parker takes the stand to defend her administration’s decision to throw out a petition that would have put a controversial anti-bias policy on the ballot

Bonnie Pritchett | 2/03/15, 11:15 am

HOUSTON—Called by the plaintiffs’ attorney as a hostile witness, Mayor Annise Parker gave short, sometimes curt, answers during three hours of questioning Monday in the trial over an LGBT equal rights ordinance she championed.

Courts
| The jury will decide whether city officials intentionally sabotaged a petition drive to put the Equal Rights Ordinance on the ballot

Bonnie Pritchett | 1/28/15, 11:00 am

HOUSTON—An attorney defending the City of Houston lobbed accusations of fraud and forgery against a coalition of pastors during the first day of the trial challenging the city’s dismissal of a petition to repeal a controversial LGBT rights ordinance. The plaintiffs’ attorney acknowledged the inevitability of errors in the signature collection process but called the city’s disqualification of more than 90 percent of the signatures groundless and without precedent.

Education
| A program designed to teach STEM principles in public schools ends up pointing students to God

Bonnie Pritchett | 9/03/13, 12:00 pm

Asim Momim got the last laugh.

At the beginning of the 2012-13 school year, his friends snickered when he told them his high school aerospace engineering class would build an airplane. Sarcastically they asked for a ride. But one afternoon in late May, Momim and his classmates from Clear Springs High School in League City, Texas, were the ones laughing, and cheering, as they watched their two-seater experimental aircraft, dubbed Elder One, take flight.

Military
| Kitty Millard has become an expert at tracking down Vietnam veterans and reuniting them with long-lost buddies

Bonnie Pritchett | 11/02/12, 01:00 am

On Oct. 10, 1968, Dennis Pfaff led a patrol of U.S. soldiers through the rice paddies of Vietnam’s Chu Lai area. The men of Bravo Company 4th/21st, 11th Light Infantry Brigade avoided the footpaths and dirt tracks that passed for roads for fear of tripping a land mine. One misstep could take a leg or a life.

The men waded as far as they could through the water before they had to climb up on the bank near the site of an earlier explosion that foundered a tank but injured no one. But when the patrol reached the site of the first explosion, another mine went off.